On the death of her husband Charles in Hobart in 1852, Phillis Seal (1807–1877) became the first woman to own and run a whaling fleet. Buffeted by falling prices for whale oil and labour shortages due to the gold rushes, Phillis eventually sold her ships and retired to live near her eldest son at Ballarat in ...
European immigrant William Milner was a little-known entrepreneur who established a porcelain manufacturing business after
arriving in Melbourne in 1911. The porcelain industry was largely driven by a massive need for electrical insulators, and, as
COVID-19 has demons...
Two early arks held in the museum collection of The Great Synagogue in Elizabeth Street, Sydney are impressive examples of Australian furniture. Their distinct Egyptian style could have been a source of inspiration for the architectural style of the York Street Synagogue (1844). In her search for the...
The box seen here shows the superb carving of John Kendrick Blogg, a successful and entrepreneurial industrial chemist who was born in 1851 in Canada, settled in the Surrey Hills region of Victoria in 1877 and died in 1936. His day job involved making perfumes and extracting essential oils. Family legend has it...
Artists in early Australia were usually trained in Britain and Europe in the Classical tradition going back to ancient Greece and Rome. David Hansen explores the possibility that, in the composition of his paintings created in Van Diemen’s Land, Benjamin Duterrau was influenced by Renaissance and Classical mo...
Greg Hill’s new research, using contemporary newspapers and other resources now easily available on Trove, has found a raft of previously unknown potteries operating in Victoria in the 19th century. These push back the dates of Victorian pottery manufacture into the 1840s. Many examples of these wares however...
When Yvonne Barber first proposed writing an article about William Frederick Ward, your editor’s response was ‘Who?’ Readers will react the same way, yet W F Ward was involved in the engraving, design and manufacture of silverware for 40 years. He designed the arms of the City of Sydney, won the competiti...
Following our calling for expressions of interest and personal approaches, the Board recently endorsed Robert Hannan, Peter Crawshaw, Gail Darby and Phillip Black as the NSW Branch Committee. At the Committee’s first meeting Robert Hannan was elected Chair and Peter Crawshaw Secretary. These individuals posse...
German settlers in South Australia, notably in the Barossa and to a lesser extent in other parts of Australia, introduced a furniture style based on the rural carpentry traditions of their native lands, rather than the more common styles seen in Australia derived from British cabinetmaking. David Bedford and Ri...
A gold mourning brooch to commemorate the passing of John Hillas in 1847 at Bannaby (or Bunnaby) near Taralga in southern tablelands of NSW is typical of the early Victorian era and many similar pieces come up for sale today (plates 1-2)1. Black enamel surrounds a central glass-covered locket that most likely w...
Brothers Graham and William Ferry both trained as potters in Yorkshire, emigrated to Victoria and set up their own potteries in Melbourne’s Brunswick in the last two decades of the 19th century. Noted for their sculptural domestic wares and colourful majolica wares, here Greg Hill makes the case for recognisi...
One of the first events organised by the Australiana Society’s Queensland Chapter was a visit to Miegunyah, the historic house museum owned and operated by the Queensland Women’s Historical Association in Bowen Hills, Brisbane for the past 50 years. For the visit in June 2018, local member Judith McKay acte...
Beleura, the house and garden on the Mornington Peninsula on the southern shore of Port Phillip Bay, is an estate left to the people of Victoria by John ‘Jack’ Morton Tallis (1911–1996), the youngest son of Sir George Tallis of J C Williamson theatres fame... Here was a mystery: how did John Tallis know K...
Trevor Kennedy AM has always been larger than life than most people, both in his business career and now his eclectic Australiana collection. Born and educated in Western Australia, he became a prominent Australian journalist, businessman and company director, serving on many company boards. As a journalist Tre...